Yesterday morning, around about the time that Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald was complaining about an uncharacteristically aggressive line of questioning that she faced on RTE, the Minister for Communications was preparing to announce RTÉ’s reward for the funding crisis the broadcaster’s own scandals created.
The bottom line: After unceremoniously wasting untold hundreds of thousands of taxpayer euros, RTÉ’s punishment is that it will see its funding increased by €140m over the next several years. Sinn Fein have a fair question to ask: With a government this determined to lavish funding on RTÉ, how can anyone expect the broadcaster to be fair or just when interviewing the Government’s critics?
Now you and I know of course, dear reader, that the real reason Mary Lou took a beating on RTÉ over her new immigration policy was decidedly not because RTÉ was defending the Government. RTÉ’s true role in Irish society is not, in fact, to defend the Government, but to defend the central tenets of the Irish state religion, which is progressivism. Sinn Fein’s new immigration policy, though by no means radical or even sensible, is a decided step away from progressivism. Therefore, Mary Lou was destined to be treated as a hostile actor on RTÉ, because her new policy is hostile to everything RTE employees hold dearest. Meanwhile Government Ministers who keep faith with the views of RTÉ presenters can expect to be given an easier time.
This phenomenon is exactly why RTÉ presenters would be horrified – horrified, I tell you – at the idea that state funding might in some way compromise their independence. It’s largely because the critique of RTÉ as a state-funded mouthpiece is often interpreted backwards, with people imagining that RTÉ is reliably left wing on economic and social issues because it is state funded. But this is not the case: The situation is the reverse – that RTÉ is reliably state funded because it is left wing on economic and social issues. So RTÉ genuinely thinks it is independently pursuing the public interest without fear or favour – it’s just that the majority of people in RTÉ believe that the public interest requires them to stamp down on any uppity politician who challenges the liberal or progressive world view. That’s their job, their vocation, and their calling, as they see it.
It’s not as if, as some people imagine, the Government needs to call up RTÉ and say “give Mary Lou a hard time for playing footsy with immigration skeptics”. It’s that RTÉ see it as their role to give people a hard time if they go down that road. We should not imagine, for example, that if yours truly lead the Government tomorrow that I could bribe RTÉ towards my own views with additional funding – RTÉ is a left wing, progressive institution, and always will be.
Thus, the flame-grilling Mary Lou received yesterday morning. It is not surprising, for example, that this particular interrogation came at the hands of Philip Boucher Hayes, a man whose views of the world are hardly a secret. That presenter’s vocation, for example, is on climate change, where he has been producing endless podcasts and content telling the public that a climate disaster is already upon us and will require transformational public policy efforts to address. Are we really surprised that a Green Party Minister would be eager to ensure that his job is not under threat?
Put it another way: Imagine a world in which Boucher Hayes was a reliable climate skeptic, regularly releasing radio reports on the damaging impact of solar power because 77% of the polysilicon required to make solar panels comes from China, where Uigher Muslims are often compelled to act as forced labour in its extraction. Imagine he was doing detailed reports on the impact of offshore wind energy on the great whales and other marine life. Or imagine he was questioning whether Irish climate policies might have any chance at all to slow global carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. Do we think the Green Party would be as eager to fund RTÉ extensively?
This is relatively common-sense stuff which we can all understand: If the Government was simply honest about it, we might be able to have an honest debate. Were the Minister to simply state that the Government is funding RTÉ because reporters like Boucher Hayes tend to advance the case for the Government’s policies, then we could at least consider the impact of that on our democracy.
As it is, we’re told an enormous lie: That the funding is about securing the future of “public service broadcasting”. It’s about literally anything but that.
Of course, RTÉ’s problems will not be solved by all this additional funding, which is the silver lining to the utterly disgraceful Government-made cloud that the funding constitutes. That is because RTÉ’s problems are ultimately structural: It is not made or designed for the modern media market. It cannot compete with satellite broadcasters like Sky for sports coverage, and even its previous cash cow – the GAA – is now finding alternative platforms like GAAGo. It cannot compete with streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime for prestige drama or entertainment. It cannot compete with the internet for breaking news. It can, just about, compete in Ireland for current affairs coverage, but the problem is that it now has to compete whereas for most of its existence it did not.
The Government, in the long term, might as well be going back in time and writing aid cheques to help the dinosaurs survive the asteroid, because RTÉ’s audience share is irreversibly destined to decline in the years and decades to come. You could double, or triple the funding RTÉ is to receive, and you still wouldn’t save the broadcaster from its ongoing and destined audience decline.
My colleague Ben asked the Minister, yesterday, how she could look the Irish people in the face and defend this situation. The answer, of course, is that she cannot, and she will not try to. The Government is simply banking on the fact that RTÉ’s funding will be at most a minor consideration for voters at the next election, or that, in other words, they can get away with it. They’re probably right, depressingly.
But that shouldn’t stop us seeing this decision for what it is: An utter, irredeemable, disgrace. Shame on those who signed off on it.